mariyus, 03 Mar 2011i do admit symbian is a bit outdated on some cases like resolution and cpu.butthats all.it has... moreSymbian is a software!. CPU and screen res. are hardwares!. If Nokia wanted a better hw they could have pumped it up. What has symbian to do with hw (well except for the basic req.). If they did give a better hw, symbian would have functioned even on that!

AnonD-1082, 03 Mar 2011Kudos to GSMArena for a great review. I do agree that it's not advisable to buy this device or... moreThis is just BS. The fact that Nokia announced that eventually will drop Symbian which I believe that will not happen sooner than end 2012 was taken by bloggers as it will stop supporting it beginning with tomorrow.

As the researches shows, the average live for a smartphone is 1,5 to 2 years so if you buy now an S3 device you will drop it anyway before Nokia will stop supporting it.

Moreover the fanbase is so large that I can bet Symbian will have support from the community for many many years.

I have also an N900 and I can tell you that the community did wonders with it. An in spite of the "old" hardware it can still do things that even Honeycomb can do.

So, if you like E7 go get it. If not the rest is just subjective and the market have enough to offer for almost everyone.

AnonD-252, 03 Mar 2011Sony Ericsson XPERIA Pro will be the best "slide-out" keyboard phone, very much bett... moreHow do you know if it isn't realead it? I doubt that SE can do a better hardware than Nokia.

i do admit symbian is a bit outdated on some cases like resolution and cpu.butthats all.it has usb on the go the best gps app, it has a reall menu not just all the things you have on your phone trown toghetere all in a single place.it has its minusus i admit.but if features metter for you then there isnt a phone on the market to compere with a N or E series from nokia.you will never get N8 feattures on any other brand.and if you dont buy a phone for the features then what for?people nowdays dont use the phone before they talk trash of it.use it first and you wont go back to other brands

"the web browser won’t let you open a new tab unless you hit a pop-up link" and "YouTube plays only 240p videos so you might as well be using the mobile site" and "Double tapping on a chunk of text zooms it in on screen, but the text DOESN´T AUTO FIT to the smaller viewport and you still need to scroll sideways" make any Symbian-phone almost unusable for browsing the web, and for a "smartphone" that is not acceptable!
Symbians do have a nice feature where you can control the music and the FM-radio completely from the many buttons on the headset-cable, and the are exellent for making phonecalls. I have a N97 mini and it is probably a better choice than E7 because it is more lightweight, pocketable, and both E7 and mini are completely useless for webbrowsing but they are both perfect for messaging, sms e-mail..., and both have almost perfect "slide-out" keyboards. I actually rather often still use my mini because of the music-controls on the headset-cable and because of the exellent e-mail and qwerty-keyboard, but I rarely use it for webbrowsing because Symbian, including Opera Mobile, totally suck at webbrowsing.

Irteza, 02 Mar 2011AnyOne notice on the qwerty keyboard "Y" key position is swapped with "Z" ... moreThey probably just reviewed a German version of the E7 (which explains the QWERTZ keyboard). Regional versions do have different keyboard arrangements.

I've used the phone, and must say that for me the biggest differentiator is the excellent physical keyboard.

I remember back 10 years ago when the 9210i communicator was out. Must say that its qwerty was the best one before E7 came out. I remember going to cafe's in the early 2000s with the 'brick' communicator and doing emails - only because the keyboard was so good :)

Since then, the keyboards haven't been up-to-par for large-fingered users and that's been a bit disappointing. With the E7 I can picture myself once again going to quite corners of cafe's and making notes / emails just like in the old times.

As for the Apps, I must say that the only things that I depend on, are:

- way to sync with email and calendar (both business & personal)
- way to open and modify Office-documents

Those apps are there with S^3, so I'm happy with that.

Biz users are one of the most important groups for Nokia smartphone owners, so I'm quite certain that they're thinking about all sorts of incentives to make the 'bridge over (i don't say troubled :) waters' from S^3 to WP7 phone. Personally looking forward to that because the two points critical to me are going to get only better with WP7.

And I must say that the two points above are going to get only better with the WP7 platform,

DevilG, 03 Mar 2011Lets address disadvantages as the majority of other phones' users and why they shouldn't buy t... moreIf battery fails, Nokia gives a 2 year warranty on all its new phones and it will be covered, so there will be no charge.

There is a large symbian user base and not just me who are familiar with it.

N8 camera proved not all cell phone camera's suck.

On the app store front is it good that people have to spend hours of their lives trying to find a suitable app maybe you have the time to do that but I dont.

Manufacturers, networks etc will have alot more data and how much data people place on their phones, and this for the average user is about 6gb, and for the higher users about 12gb. There will always be exceptions, but Nokia make phones for the masses.

I find the web browser to be the most disappointing aspect of the E7 and Symbian^3 devices as a whole. As someone who browses the internet a lot on my phone, I want a good web browser. The Symbian browser just did not measure up to the Android browser. Not even Opera measured up.

There are many things I do like about the E7. The build quality of the keyboard slider mechanism is very impressive. The Clear Black Display is really nice even though the resolution may be low compared to other high end phones. I expect the sound quality to be very good as well.

Although I've used Android for the past few months and like it much more than Symbian, I feel I could have worked with Symbian as I owned an N97 before. Ultimately it was the poor browser and delay in release that made me decide against the E7. I had lived with Opera Mini for a while on my N97. I felt that I needed a better browser and there was nothing I saw from Symbian that appealed to me.

Lets address disadvantages as the majority of other phones' users and why they shouldn't buy this phone.

1. "If your used to symbian as I am then it isnt a downside, I also own android, iOS and bada devices and I prefer symbian for whatever reason."

-Not many is used to symbian as you are and why should they?

2. "For me this is also an advantage cos I got sick of wading through piles of utter useless apps in Android market and App store."

-There are an informative database called "internet", in case you're living in a cave or something, where people review apps from App store and Android market all the time. It wouldn't take much time to find what app you need. I'm prefer having more choices than have nothing to choose.

3. "Acceptable compromise, I know nowt about cameras and edof will give me better results than I can get with an 8mp AF that I currently have."

Anonymous, 02 Mar 2011it's funny. because when compared to an IOS there are many simple tasks like removing icons fr... moreiOS does lack widgets. I give Symbian that for actually having widgets. They need to be the same size, unlike Android.

I just ordered the phone. I tried a unit at the store and it worked flawlessly on my most business task. That tilting 4" screen looks great.
Too many good features on this phone,
Symbian will be lasting as long as every other mobile OS on this planet, before it moves to another generation of hardware. The life of an OS depends on sales, profit and hardware technology.